Amid the blizzard of coverage following the bombing on Benazir Bhutto’s convoy in Karachi last week, two pieces that are worth a look:
First, for a big picture view of worries in the Beltway about Pakistan, see this excellent news analysis article from yesterday’s New York Times. While David Sanger and David Rohde found the usual expressions of confidence in Musharraf from White House officials, other “current and former officials” warned that US leverage over Pakistan is now limited – and Musharraf himself weakened, following failed attempts at conciliation in tribal areas, ineffectual military action against the Taliban and Al Qaeda
Almost every major terror attack since 9/11 has been traced back to Pakistani territory, leading many who work in intelligence to believe that Pakistan, not Iraq, is the place Mr. Bush should consider the “central front” in the battle against terrorism. It was also the source of the greatest leakage of nuclear arms technology in modern times.
After years of compromises and trade-offs, there are questions inside and outside the administration about whether Mr. Bush has invested too heavily in a single Pakistani leader, an over-reliance that may have prevented the United States from examining other long-term strategies. “It never stitched together,” said Daniel Markey, a State Department official who dealt with Pakistan until he left government earlier this year. “At every step, there was more risk aversion — because of the risk of rocking the boat seemed so high — than there was a real strategic vision.”
[snip]
“We have to remember that the U.S. doesn’t have very much capability to affect internal developments” in Pakistan, said Robert D. Blackwill, the former American ambassador to India and a senior official in the National Security Council during Mr. Bush’s first term.
“What I am struck by are the trends we see today: the North-West Province is ungovernable and a sanctuary for terrorists,” he said. “The politics are fractured and deeply unstable, Musharraf is weaker, and the army is uncertain which way it will go.”
Second, see this Sunday Times article by Christina Lamb, who was on Bhutto’s bus when the bomb went off (she knows Bhutto and various of her aides from way back when, and they invited her on board for the procession after spotting her in the crowd of journos at the airport). Her account of the bomb blast is predictably harrowing, but what’s especially noteworth here is her access to Bhutto’s team, and Bhutto herself, both before and immediately after the blast. For instance:
…this was a US-brokered deal that had involved frequent meetings with Richard Boucher, the US assistant secretary of state for south and central Asia, as well as 2am phone calls from Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, to break deadlocks.
Britain had also played its part, and Jack Straw was credited with bringing Bhutto in from the cold when he was foreign secretary.
“As long as Washington and Whitehall are wedded to keeping Musharraf in power for their war on terror, she had no choice but to come back like this,” said [Bhutto’s security adviser] Malik, who led the negotiations on her side.
